Ganga at Varanasi to be pollution-free soon

New Delhi, Oct 20: The government has claimed that soon the Ganga river will flow pollution-free along the spiritual city of Varanasi and the objective of Nirmal Ganga will not just remain a dream. According to a statement issued by Water Resources Ministry on Friday, Under the Namami Gange programme, an all-encompassing approach has been employed to arrest pollution flowing into the river and ensure clean ghats. The National Mission for Clean Ganga to rid the city of river pollution has taken several steps from sewage treatment plants to ghat improvement to river surface cleaning in a time-bound manner. Varanasi currently generates an estimated 300 MLD of sewage which is expected to increase to 390 MLD by 2030. From the current capacity of three existing sewage treatment plants – Dinapur, Bhagwanpur and DLW, only 102 MLD of sewage is being treated while the remaining flows directly into river Ganga through Varuna and Assi rivers. To bridge this gap, a 140 MLD STP at Dinapur and a 120 MLD STP at Goitha are being constructed under Japan International co-operation Agency (JICA) assisted project and JNNURM scheme respectively. These projects are at advanced stage of construction and will be commissioned before March 2018. Apart from this, a 50 MLD STP at Ramana has also been awarded under Hybrid Annuity based PPP model to exclusively address the sewage treatment requirements of Assi BHU area. Concession agreement for this project has already been signed. Together, these STPs will create sewage treatment capacity of 412 MLD, adequate to meet the sewage treatment demands of the town till 2035. Besides, the works on interceptor sewers for rivers Varuna and Assi, development of three pumping stations at Chauka ghat, Phulwaria and Saraiya, rehabilitation of old trunk sewers and rehabilitation of ghat pumping stations and existing STPs are also underway. To address the concerns of floating waste on the river, a trash skimmer is operational in Varanasi since April 2017 under river surface cleaning component. UNI